Here is a letter I received the other day. ‘Our generation is the visual generation. Earlier if you were hard up you asked. The girl said yes or no. Then it was only a question, back of the car or on the roof? Drive of testatrone( sic) one could arrange by the drive-in cinema. I missed Chitty-chitty Bang Bang!’I was watching the sophomores who were making out in the open. I seen them do it between rows of library shelves and under the kitchen table and in the bushes. Oh yes, in the bushes. How could I have missed that? I have my camera with telsescopic lense aimed there.’ Peeping Tom.
As soon as I found this note I instinctively pulled the curtains and arranged my thoughts. What with so many Dark Knights, all visually gunning for others one need even be careful how one thinks.
You see the social media sites and YouTube,- everybody is dumping his or her sorry mess,- and it is visual junk,- you know art has descended to the street level,and to the sewer level. Here we have no art, no controls no second thoughts but pure animal drive to be seen come what may. I even felt some sympathy for Peeping Tom, the antediluvian jerk who might have seen dogs do it and canine captivus watching with glee got him forever hooked. In the gene pool this genetic marker ,a prurient interest seems to have, over the eons of time, become so pervasive it is no longer a taboo but the mark of being in with the trend.
Nowadays sexting is how the visual generation connects.
Sexting is the practice of sending explicit words or pictures via text messaging. As handheld mobile devices have become more common, teens have increasingly used them for sexting, but exact numbers are hard to pin down. A study of private-school students in the U.S. Southwest found that nearly 20 percent of high-school students had ever sent an explicit image via their cellphone. Twice as many had received an explicit photo via cellphone.
In 2009, a Pew Internet and American Life survey pegged the number of sexting teens at about 15 percent (though only 4 percent had sent photos themselves). In 2011, a national study of 10- to 18-year-olds found that only about 1 percent of this age group created their own sexually explicit images.
Teenagers overwhelmingly say they’re irritated when asked to “sext” nude pictures of themselves to other teens, but nearly 30 percent have done so anyway. How progressive are we?
The adolescents are still in terms of brain circuitry just coming to terms with the real world. The Colorado shooter could not sort out the real and the make believe world. What sort of world was his home, anyway? I wonder if his parents were merely keeping up appearances and he was yet to get some grounding as to what was real.
Some visual generation! They have looked at them all but have they seen for what they are? I wonder.(Ack: LiveScience.com July 2,’12)
Tail Spin: Don’t blame NRA but the special interest groups and your Congressmen who are gun dealers on commission basis. Progress is not merely riding the tailwind of technology but also to say No to what is not in the best interests of the next generation.